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New monkey virus jumps to humans

The discovery of a new class of monkey virus jumping into humans has reinforced claims that HIV came from bushmeat hunting.

It also suggests that viruses jump species much more often than thought – raising the risk that new viral diseases will eventually develop in humans.

The simian foamy viruses newly found in the bushmeat hunters by US and Cameroonian scientists are probably harmless, but follow up studies are planned to check whether they spread between people or cause disease.

“Our research shows the transmission of retroviruses to humans is not limited to a few, isolated occurrences like those that gave rise to HIV,” says Nathan Wolfe of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who lead the study. “It’s a regular phenomenon, and a cause for concern,” he says.

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Cuts and grazes

Working with Eitel Mpoudi-Ngole’s team at the Cameroon Military Medical Centre in Yaounde, Wolfe screened 1800 people from nine rural communities in Cameroon.

Ten of the 1100 who said they had been exposed to blood or body fluids of primates through hunting tested positive for the foamy viruses.

Three strains of foamy virus had jumped species in different geographic regions, reflecting their respective primate sources-the gorilla, the mandrill and the De Brazza’s guenon.

Wolfe says that the viruses have jumped to humans before, but only in zoos or scientific primate centres. The work in Cameroon is the first to show that it can happen naturally, probably through cuts and grazes when hunters handle and prepare bushmeat.

“This has never been documented before,” says Martine Peeters of the Institute of Research for Development in Montpellier, France, in a commentary alongside the paper in The Lancet.

She says that reducing hunting would have two benefits. “It would help conserve endangered species and lower the potential for transmission of viruses to people.”

Next pandemic

Wolfe says that many hunters catch bushmeat through necessity, not choice, and that it would be cost effective for donors to provide them with alternative sources of food. “If you think of the lives lost and the billions of dollars spent on HIV/AIDS, the cost of replacing bushmeat to prevent the next pandemic seems a reasonable investment,” he notes.

He also stresses that the phenomenon probably occurs throughout Central Africa and parts of Asia where primates are hunted.

Wolfe and Peeters say that the findings reinforce what is already largely beyond dispute-that HIV arose from its monkey equivalent, SIV, after it jumped into humans, probably in bushmeat hunters.